Bellator light heavyweight prospect Luke Trainer will look to get back in the win column this Saturday at Bellator 287.
A few months removed from the first loss of his pro fighting career, Trainer (5-1) spoke to media outlets including Cageside Press about the takeaways from his loss to Simon Biyong back in May.
“I learned a lot obviously. It’s corny to say it’s not a loss, it’s a lesson — it was definitely a loss. I’m glad it happened early in the career,” said Trainer, just days out from a fight with Lucas Alsina in Italy. “If I could change a few things in camp, I would have. It is what it is, you’ve got to keep moving. I’ve made a lot of adjustments now, so it’s not going to happen again.”
In fighting, of course, there’s the physical side of the game, and the mental. Bruises heal, but the first loss of your career is a different kind of injury. Trainer admitted that on that front, “it was a weird one.”
“Physically, I have a little scar above my left eye now. I had a couple of injuries after, but nothing crazy. Mentally, it was new for me,” he recalled. “I would walk through my local super market, and I remember being embarrassed to be me. Carrying the name of Luke Trainer, it means a lot to me. So that was new, being embarrassed to be myself, not wanting to be seen in public. I created this self-image of me that I’d never really seen before. That took a while for me to get over, but like I said, I’m glad it happened early. Because now I’ve recognized that, now I’ve recognized the kind of dark demons that you can get yourself into.”
With the loss behind him, Trainer added that he’s used it to fuel his return.
“Learned some lessons from that, but mentally it did take a while for me to get out of that hole. But to be honest now it’s just fuel to fire. It’s just added more fuel, that’s all I can say. It’s made me a lot more violent, made me a lot more professional, a lot more prepared in training camp, and I’ve just taken everything up a little notch. So I’m glad it happened the way it did.”
Watch the full Bellator 287 media day appearance by Luke Trainer above. The event takes place this Saturday, October 29, 2022 at the Allianz Cloud Arena in Milan, Italy.
